He looked toward her mother.
“Kid’s brutal.”
“She gets it from somewhere.”
That night, after the girl finally went inside, the mother found the biker loading tools into his truck.
She approached.
“Thank you.”
He shrugged.
“Was fun.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That was not two weeks of ‘fun.’”
The biker continued organizing sockets.
She waited.
Finally:
“Why?”
He stopped.
The question changed him.
The mother immediately knew.
He looked toward the house.
Through the window, the girl was showing the mini motorcycle to someone over video call.
The biker looked away.
“Had a daughter.”
The mother said nothing.
Past tense.
Had.
He continued.
“She liked bikes.”
The mother’s chest tightened.
“How old?”
“When?”
He laughed once without humor.
“When she started?”
He looked toward the street.
“Five.”
“When I lost her?”
Pause.
“Ten.”
The mother closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it nothing.”
He looked toward her.
“No.”
It did not.
He sat on the truck tailgate.
The mother remained standing.
The biker spoke slowly.
“My girl used to sit right there.”
He pointed toward the garage four houses away.
“She’d watch me build.”
“I kept telling her she was too little.”
“Too young.”
“Tools are dangerous.”
“Come back when you’re older.”
The mother listened.
“She kept drawing bikes.”
“Terrible drawings.”
He smiled faintly.
“Wheels were never round.”
“She wanted a yellow one.”
The mother looked toward the custom bike.
Her heart dropped.
“Yellow.”
He nodded.
“She kept asking me to build her something.”
“I told her when she turned twelve.”
“What happened?”
The biker’s jaw tightened.
“Heart.”
The mother waited.
“Born with a defect.”
“Surgeries when she was little.”
“Doctors said things looked good.”
“Then one morning…”
He stopped.
The mother did not make him finish.
He continued anyway.
“She was at school.”
“Collapsed.”
“That was it.”
The mother sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
The biker rubbed both hands together.
“I closed the back room after that.”
“What’s in it?”
“Her stuff.”
“Drawings.”
“Half-finished projects.”
“I stopped custom building for almost three years.”
The mother looked at him.
“But you run a custom shop.”
“Repairs.”
“Maintenance.”
“Other people’s designs.”
“Different.”
She looked toward the new yellow motorcycle.
“Until now.”
He nodded.
“Until now.”
The mother understood.
Her daughter had not only received a gift.